Old Business

[hrj]

So you know that lawyer who did the partnership dissolution paperwork for me who had the difficulty in remembering the contracted hourly rate and the … um … interesting assortment of charges that I asked for clarification on? It having been two months since my letter asking for some clarification, and having received no correspondence from him in the mean time (including no bill for hours accrued in May) I wrote another letter, pointing out this absence of correspondence. I considered copying the complaint department of the California Bar Association (and mentioning that I was doing so in the letter), but having checked out their web site, they don’t seem to have scope for anything short of a formal complaint and I don’t think that’s called for yet. (If I don’t hear back in the next couple of weeks, I think it is called for. Remember, this guy still has my retainer.) So I downloaded the complaint form and instructions for future reference. I honestly don’t believe the guy is actively dishonest – but I think he may be disastrously disorganized (plus a healthy dose of “Hey, let’s spend 5 seconds talking about client X so we can bill her for a quarter hour’s consultation.”).

Went to a neighborhood meeting this evening to meet with a representative of the developer who’s converting the live-work apartments on the corner to “commercial condominiums”. Some of the neighbors were freaked out about the label “commercial condominium” but it turns out it’s simply what you call a “live-work apartment” when it turns into a condo. There was much angst and squeeage about parking impact (is it going to be worse than the same number of apartments?), noise generation (are 11 individual trash cans noisier than one collective dumpster?), and aesthetics (is there anything one can do with a warehouse to make it look less like a warehouse without making it look like a pig dressed up in a lace nightie?). I confess that, while there are some real concerns, I’ve yet to be convinced that owner-occupiers of condos are likely to be worse neighbors than the current rental-to-private-art-college-students. And a lot of the meeting got sidetracked into things like brainstorming the best low-maintenance landscaping, or arguing the pluses and minuses of neighborhood permit parking, and lingered on details about which the developer really can’t make pledges for the future owners’ execution.

Just before the meeting, got a phone call from Dad and helped persuade Mom that a fever of 102F really did mean that she ought to go get checked out, even if it meant going to emergency, and even if her doctor’s office said she should call them in the morning if it didn’t get better. She’d been in for a bone marrow test earlier in the day and had been feeling a bit out of it since then. Maybe it’s just some sort of stress reaction, but if only for everyone’s peace of mind, I think it’s better to be on the safe side.

Comments

[kaththeamac.livejournal.com]

Leaving the artists that many fewer places to live and work?

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. The building had been bought and converted to live-work apartments by the school, so it was more in the line of a private dormitory than openly available artists' housing. And even your average ordinary "industrial live-work apartment" around here isn't really priced for artists with marginal incomes. It's just the legal work-around for "we don't want to turn this industrial space into something genuinely habitable". This building never was part of the available housing for random artistic inhabitants, so the conversion isn't technically taking it out of that market. (Heck, we have more active artists on my block living in regular houses than would be housed by the live-work condos.) But it's rather astounding to me what they think people will pay for a dinky little apartment in a converted warehouse with no off-street parking and -- in half the cases -- only skylights for natural lighting.

[kaththeamac.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the answer. I figured it was more complicated, the whole bay area housing scene seems to be really tight, I don't know how anyone does it. Robyn Elisabeth is at my mother's, she is working part time but I know there's no way she could afford any kind of apartment right now.

lawyer

[dame-cordelia.livejournal.com]

Do you owe him money? If so and he hasn't proven the disputed charges, don't pay them. Then he will have incentive to get organized.

Re: lawyer

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Good question. WIth regard to the charges through April, I paid the billed hours multiplied by the rate on the signed contract (which is a smaller amount than the sum on the bill), so I think there's a sound legal basis for concluding that I don't owe him money, but I don't have confirmation that he agrees on that point. However presumably there should be at least a minimal amount of billable time in May since someone had to stick their photocopy of the completed document in my file -- and I haven't paid that because I haven't been billed for it yet. I prefer standing on the high moral ground, hence my choice to pay in full while at the same time requesting clarification on the questionable items. Besides which, since he's holding onto a retainer that's more than the entire amount charged so far, holding back on the payment wouldn't really give him any incentive to do anything but claim I'd defaulted and keep the whole thing.